Most Certainly A Pond
by snowy scarf
Summary: The Doctor and River have a teenage daughter. How does he console her when her mother meets her fate in the library? Fluffy one-shot...unless you beg for more...


A message flashed across the psychic paper in a slanted, curving scrawl:

/Daddy I need you/

The Doctor flipped the thin leather cover back over the notepad and immediately began punching in the coordinates he knew by heart. If his daughter needed him, he simply had to be there. As he flew his TARDIS through the vortex, a terrifying though entered his mind and made his hearts sink. No, no it couldn't be...not yet...

He stepped out into his teenage daughter's bedroom; a domain that at first glance looked as though it had been run through by a tornado. Yesterday's skinny jeans were hung over a desk (or what appeared to be a desk from under the mess) covered with papers and textbooks. Other crumpled or torn papers littered the floor. Her multiple shelves were overflowing with novels and various knick-knacks and artifacts from across time and space. A dark blue quilt, embellished with silver stars, draped carelessly from the top part of her unshared bunkbed, creating a curtain in front of the bottom half. Quiet sobbing could be head from the other side.

The Doctor pushed the quilt aside. She lay on the bed in the fetal position, shoulders quivering, eyes squeezed shut, and freckled cheeks stained with tears. Her hin fingers were intertwined in her soft, light brown curls and they grasped at her head as if she was clinging to her final scraps of sanity.

The Doctor sat down beside her and brushed his fingers over her cheekbone in a feeble attempt to console her.

"Galilea?" he questioned tenatively, "Did Mum...?"

"Go to the library?" she replied shakily "Yea"

"Oh Gal..." he whispered apologetically as she threw her arms around his neck and sobbed

into his tweed jacket. His arms held the sixteen year old while she cried for her mother.

She was too young to loose te only family she had, thought the Doctor, choking back his own tears. She would never know her brilliant grandparents or her ancestors who were lost in the time war. He was all she had now.

"My precious girl" he whispered, unable to control the flow of his tears anymore. He kissed the top of her head.

"You knew that she was going to die there" Galilea said. Her voice was unaccusing but still laced with grief. She knew that her father had complicated, timey-Wiley relationships that forced him to hide himself and lie to the ones he loved the most, more than anything in the universe, but his god intentions didn't make any of it hurt less.

The Doctor sighed with guilt heavy as an anvil in his chest.

"Yes, I knew" he admitted, turning his head away so he wouldn't have to see his daughter's eyes. River's eyes.

"Why didn't you stop her?" Galilea sniffled, her arms still secured around his neck "You could've warned her not to go"

"No" he murmured "I couldn't, it was a fixed point"

"Fixed points can be rewritten!" she sobbed.

The Doctor shook his head sadly. He pulled away and placed his hands firmly on her shoulders. Their eyes locked and pain stabbed at the Doctor's hearts.

"Galilea Song" he began "Your mother was a brilliant woman. She saved so many people, me included. And in more ways than one" He smiled fondly now as he brushed River's curls away from his daughter's flushed, tear soaked face "She loved you more than anything. She pretended to hate bowties and came with her own gun. She sacrificed herself for the library and by doing so she saved you and I. I see her in you so much that it hurts, Galilea, but the good memories outweigh the bad" He kissed her forehead then tilted her chin up "And I can promise you that she's safe and happy"

"How? She died"

The Doctor smiled and whispered, "I saved her in a special place, the database of the library"

Galilea smiled a small bittersweet smile.

"There we are" the Doctor said "There's that smile"

"Dad?" she asked, wiping her tears away "Could I maybe, please come traveling with you?" Her eyes were pleading, hopeful.

The words River Song spoke to him after New York echoed in his mind:

/Don't travel alone/

The Doctor stood and held out his hand to his daughter.

"Come along, Pond"

Galilea took his hand and he pulled her to her feet.

"I'm not a-"

The Doctor silenced her by pressing a finger to her lips.

"You are most certainly a Pond"


End file.
